Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday August 21, 2011 @10:13AM
from the back-to-business dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon today announced that the approximately 45,000 wireline employees represented by the CWA and IBEW that have been on strike will return to work beginning Monday night, August 22nd, without new collective bargaining agreements. Since the strike began two weeks ago, Verizon has been battling criminal acts of sabotage against its network facilities and union picketers intimidating non-union replacement workers and illegally blocking garage and work center entrances. One union picketer even went as far as to instruct his young daughter to stand in front of a Verizon truck to illegally block it from coming back to a Verizon work center in New Jersey. Verizon said the wireline employees now on strike would be working under the terms of the contracts that expired on Saturday, August 6th. The contracts will be extended with no specific deadline for achieving new collective bargaining agreements so that the parties can take the time required to resolve the critical issues, the company said."

But the union won... They were fine with the current contracts, the issue was Verizon wanted the gut health care and retirement benefits. So going back to work under the old contract is a win for them...

Yes. Getting rid of benefits with no replacement is gutting. Now if they wanted to raise everyone's pay by the amount it would cost for them to each individually replace this benefit then fine, but they are essentially decreasing the salary of the workers.

Don't you understand that when you take a job, you negotiate for a "Total Compensation" package. If the value of that is $100,000, and $25,000 of it is in 'benefits', if you cut the 'benefits' by $10,000 you need to INCREASE TAKE HOME PAY by ten grand PLUS the lost tax benefit...

In other words, you don't SAVE any money by cutting benefits, because unless your goal is to FUCK PEOPLE OVER, then you're going to be increasing their take home, so your "Total Comp" package remains the same....

So, following your logic: If an employee has a contract for total compensation of X dollars which includes $1000 per month in health insurance. When the insurance premiums go up 10% the following year, the union employee should then pay the extra $100 because the contract was for a fixed amount? The article mentioned that the contract had expired, I see NOTHING wrong with a new contract that requires that ALL employees pay a portion of health care costs.

In the real (non union) world you don't negotiate for 'Total Compensation' in dollars, you negotiate for salary (which is usually a fixed amount) and benefits (which are usually not fixed).

I wouldn't be jealous either. You have to consider what you are dealing with when talking to Americans. Its a country heading downhill at breakneck speed toward fascism. The 2012 elections here, provided we make it to them without imploding, will tell the tale of our future, which looks grim either way. We are an incredibly polarized country with a propensity towards violence which promises to be volatile in the near future.

Our trade policies, which the rich corporations have fostered through our corrupt politicians, have gutted our entire industry. The jobless are growing, tent cities are springing up outside of our cities and people are homeless. Yet we continue to whistle past the graveyard, ignoring it all. We just had a showdown in our congress where the rich won, badly needed social programs will be cut so that the rich can enjoy the lowest taxes in decades.

Why aren't we rioting in the streets? Chalk it up to weapons grade propaganda, a police state second to none, and an under educated population that worships the rich and corporations like a cargo cult.

If you think you are immune to our evils in Britain, you are dead wrong. From this madness, multinational corporations have grown to power that aren't content to suck the marrow from our bones, they want everyone's, including yours. Corporations have been allowed to grow into monsters here. We were their egg. They are beyond our control now, because they control us.

All in all, it was our ignorance and greed that took us down. If nothing, we are a cautionary tale. So, make a snack, and watch as we sink into oblivion. We are collapsing under our own weight while locked in a vice grip, strangled by those in power. My advice to your country; Burn every Wal-Mart you have to the ground. Hound those who run them down and hang them from light poles down town. Protect your jobs, protect your industry or bow to your Chinese Overlords, they are the real winner when the smoke has cleared.

Funny, the UK spends less than half of the GDP per capita compared to the US, for a similar standard of care (and encompassing the entirety of our population, not just those who can afford it).

The propaganda machine worked very well to convince Americans that socialised health care systems were backward, stone age, expensive disasters when they are really.... not. They are not perfect, and will never claim that they are - the UK NHS does need some serious attention, but it is light years ahead of the US system. It's not even close.

You're also one to talk about "black holes" in the national budget, keeping two wars off the books. The annual cost of the UK's healthcare provision (approximately 50 billion pounds, or 82/83 billion USD) is nothing compared to that, or the huge hole opened by the bush era tax cuts for the wealthy.

The UK spends 8% of its GDP per capita on healthcare and *everyone* is covered. The US spends 16% of its GDP per capita and there are millions of Americans who are not covered, and a huge number who get into crippling debt if they get sick.

The NHS is far from a "black hole" in our budget - it is certainly one of the most expensive things by a long chalk, but it is very cost effective for the care it provides. It suffered 20 years of neglect under a right wing government in the 80s that wanted to kill it but knew they couldn't do it outright, so they tried to starve it to death, and it is still recovering to this day (with bungling of modernisation by both sides of the political spectrum in the wake of the Thatcher years), but it is one of the shining examples of modern Britain to come out of the post war years.

Don't believe everything the right wing media tells you about "death panels" and "doctor rationing" and "financially crippling to the economy" - they are what as known as "lies".

We certainly don;t have the best example in Europe (Sweden and Norway are far better, as is France), but we are head and shoulders above the US. I have extensive experience of both systems, so I am well positioned to be able to directly compare them.

It's a shame, because the standard of care in US hospitals is excellent, there's just a massive impenetrable wall in front of the entrances, or more accurately, the hospitals are behind huge moats with sharks and rocks. You can buy a boat to get across, or you can pay insurance to be able to rent one if you need it. We just built a bridge over the moat here in the UK, and everyone chips in a few pounds per month from their paycheque to keep the bridge in good repair (but you can still go with private insurance and private healthcare if you like). The fact that everyone pays a little means that the costs are much, much, much lower for everyone.

Of course, there's the fact that your military and France's combined don't even have the ability to control the airspace of the third world country that entirely controls your supply of ultra sweet crude oil for more than 2 months without running out of munitions. That doesn't even consider that you decided to get rid of all your aircraft carriers and depend upon the french for carrier platforms until what, 2016? You think your health care scheme is so grand, fine. How about America withdraws entirely from western Europe and says that Britain, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Germany are ripe for the plucking for anybody who cares to do so and we will offer exactly ZERO assistance to them. We'll continue guarding Finland, Poland, Georgia, and the Ukraine of course, but will allow the Russians and any other interested parties passage through said territories for a small fee. Moreover, any pharma corp that deals with any of the above countries at prices under what the drugs command in the US gets all their assets seized. Be fun to see the fallout from that particular maneuver.

Please do. The USA caused more political unrest in the Middle East over the course of its attempts to control access to oil than any other nation. You're the reason we're in this mess, and we have long been working our way out of it, especially on attempting to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Either way, it's irrelevant. We spend less than half the GDP per capita on healthcare that the US does (as do the bulk of countries with socialised healthcare) *despite* your large military spending. In other word

As an American, I want to say thank you. Please keep fighting this perception. Every time national health care is brought up it's fought with cries of "SOCIALISM!". Never mind the facts you stated about the UK, or the fact that we already have more than a few "socialized" services (Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Police, Fire Department, etc.).

The problem is health care costs are going up, substantially. Verizon cannot shoulder all of it, so they are asking for workers to pay some as well. Verizon cannot afford to give the equivalent of a 10-20% raise to everyone, especially in a bad economy for a field that is losing a lot of customers (wireline access).

The fact is, things change, and the workers cannot be expected to be insulated from all changes. Or at least non-union workers cannot.

You do understand that today drug prices in the US are making up for the discounts outside the US, right?The reason the drug companies are still taking the huge risks they are is because in the US they get to make their money back. The rest of the world is pretty much just riding along because of the profits made in the US.

Sure, the US government could mandate drug pricing as is done in most of the rest of the world. The response would be quite simple - the government would have to be in the drug business because it would be pretty unrewarding. Yes, a lot of research is today paid by the government or other public institutions, but no public institution is doing drug testing - you know, the ten years or so of trials that are needed for FDA approval. The FDA would pretty much have to take that over.

Also, a huge component of health care costs today is the cost-shifting from Medicare and Medicaid. When the government pays 15% of the going rate for care the other 85% is going to be put somewhere. It isn't just that the government gets a big discount. So expanding Medicaid to cover more and more people means more and more cost shifting. Your $1600 prescriptions might have only cost $800 a few years ago but with someone on Medicaid getting it for $25 means someone else is going to make up the difference. Easy to outlaw cost shifting, but what would happen then? Same thing that has happened with vaccine manufacturers - they all quit.

The first thing to understand about US health care is that it is all about old people, who today are mostly on cost-shifted Medicare. Yes, nearly all the money spent on health care (like 90%) is for old people. This is very different from any other country on the planet. All we need to do is stop spending 90% of the health care money on old people and there will be plenty for everyone and health care will be back to reasonable prices. But it seems nobody wants to tell the old people about that kind of a plan. Yet.

Obamacare is a complete government takeover of health care, whether they understand it or not. When every single employer understands they can pay $10,000 per employee for health insurance or they can pay a $2000 fine per employee (or less), they are going to choose to pay the fine. This puts the entire load onto the government for everyone and the plan will no longer be revenue-neutral - the cost will be in the trillions. The only way to make it affordable, even for the government, is to kick old people out of the system and stop spending 90% on old people. Bring it down to 20-30% like everywhere else and we can have government-funded health care for everyone without even raising any taxes.

u do understand that today drug prices in the US are making up for the discounts outside the US, right?
The reason the drug companies are still taking the huge risks they are is because in the US they get to make their money back. The rest of the world is pretty much just riding along because of the profits made in the US.

This is a common lie repeated ad nauseam during the healthcare debates. Only on slashdot would such tripe be modded up. But you know it's a lie. In fact I'm fairly certain you were involved in those same debates and people called you out numerous times. I'm not sure what psychosis you have to ignore the truth and spout the same garbage over and over again.

Problem is, the economy is contracting and a wireline provider is basically something just waiting to die, at least for young people.

What is Verizon supposed to do with needing fewer and fewer employees, having fewer and fewer customers and less and less revenue? With a union shop they can't fire people because they are no longer needed. They can't change their job descriptions. So about all they can do is cut spending per employee.

The problem with unions is that it works fine for a growing company, as l

Oh? You think sharing other people's money actually improves civilization somehow? Government taking money out of private sector and spending the money on what it prefers is what created all of the economic problems since the income taxes were introduced and the Fed was created in USA, while USA became the largest creditor nation and producer of innovation and cheap high quality goods prior to that moment in time.

Having government redistribute profits is what creates the mis-allocation of resources, takes p

the idea of collective bargaining is that you are not smart enough to bargain for yourself, so you are treated as a grunt

The idea of collective bargaining is that as a collective you have more leverage than you would otherwise have. This is coming from a conservative, so don't for a second think that I'm some liberal drone coming to the defense of unions.

I believe in liberty, and that means I believe that people have a right to form collectives. Yet I am against some aspects of public sector unions, because I believe that both parties in a negotiation should first have a moral authority to negotiate over the things that t

Yeah but they'll pay overtime to fix all of the stuff the employees sabotaged. Obviously these guys don't think much about their customers if they are willing to destroy Verizon equipment as a way to get back at the company.

In an interview with a local newspaper, Short said, “Sitting in front of her [a co-worker’s vehicle] lets her know that we do not approve of her crossing the picket line when she should be standing out there suffering as much as we are.”

Source [ibtimes.com]
So basically, because of her self-inflicted suffering, anyone who doesn't join her has to suffer. Nice.

it's called treason when you go against your own group for your own personal benefit in a fight.

It's only "treason" if that "group" is a nation. And it's only even remotely betrayal if you are part of the organization. The person in question was not part of the union, and had no moral or ethical obligation to honor an agreement the union made.
So a), she didn't betray any of her peers, and b) it certainly wasn't treason, which, while you might find it inconvenient, actually is a word with a meaning.

"Pickets have no immunity from prosecution for committing criminal offences and they have no right to compel others to stop or to listen to the pickets' views. However, employees and their trade union representatives picketing their own place of work are immune from civil legal action for inducing others to break commercial or employment contracts with the employer involved in the dispute."

The immunity is to *civil* action for inducing someone else to break a contract. There is no immunity for inducement/conspiracy to commit a criminal act.

Looking around I came across this. It at least used to happen, whether is still does, I can't say either way. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

"...However, these tactics may not be good, and the union spirit may be so strong that a big organization cannot be prevented. In this case our man turns extremely radical. He asks for unreasonable things and keeps the union embroiled in trouble. If a strike comes, he will be the loudest man in the bunch, and will counsel violence and get somebody in trouble. The result will be that the union will be broken up."

In Europe, these union acts aren't illegal at all. After all, how do you expect the right to strike to matter if the company can just hire replacement workers? Unions simply don't have enough power in the USA.

Because they harass people at their homes, bother their children, trespass on people's property, block people into their homes, and try to force their way into people's homes. Then, after they change the rules regarding a union vote, they claim interference when they still lose(it was perfectly fine for them to stand right outside the employee parking lot handing out fliers, but apparently it's vote tampering for the company to actually advertise to the employees the date of the votes. How can you claim to represent the employees when you don't want them to participate?). I have all of this information from first-hand accounts of some of my coworkers(and myself) when the company I work for was recently under a union vote. These were not isolated incidents, these were systematic tactics being employed by the unions. This is why Americans dislike unions. They harass you and intimidate you to force you into something you don't want and, in the US, if a union vote passes, you have exactly 2 choices: join the union and pay them for the privilege of working, or quit. And remember, once a union is voted in, it is virtually impossible for it to be removed or decertified.

Maybe it's because someone doesn't have the right to demand that a company not hire a replacement when they don't show up for work? Maybe, if you are easily replaceable, collective bargaining is your only method of getting the wage or benefits you want. But you do not magically gain the right of stopping someone else from working. You don't get the right to blockade the property of another.

Right after this strike, a customer lost their phone line. No dial tone. Just a tad suspicious. Especially when they called the repair line, and they were told "Don't you know we're on strike? Unless there is a 911 emergency, too bad."

After two weeks, this business customer called me about setting up their new internet connection not reliant on the phone line. They already had the equipment. Not as good of a system for them, but I set it up. After some other issues cropped up with not having a tradition POTS line to work with, I contacted Verizon Repair. I was repeatedly disconnected. Finally, I called a residential sales line, and got a real live person. I explained the 2 week outage and the horrible customer service my customer received (Remember, it's the customer's existence that gives that idiot a job). She seemed genuinely sorry that the customer had this extended outage, and explained that while she was in residential service, she was trying to get a hold of someone down the hall in business services. While we waited, and talked, I told her that I had never had someone at a call center offer that kind of service. She expressed disappointment that the people who were making such a fuss were giving the rest of the employees who were still on the job a bad name.

I was shocked by her openness, and based on some other comments, her obvious intelligence and education. I told her that she should not be working in a call center, she should be an entrepreneur with a more direct relationship with customers. In this way, she would be more directly and greatly rewarded for her excellent customer service and focus.

She then told me that in fact, she was filling in. Her normal position with the company was in fact in a more executive capacity (I won't mention what, but it wasn't in the call center arena at all, and was instead in more mid-level non-tech functions).

It all made sense. She is likely a well-compensated, happy employee with some ambition. She strives to improve herself and her worth to her employer, and got rewarded for it. Indeed, she is likely perfectly able to be that kind of entrepreneur who goes on to make peoples' lives better by providing customers with things they want or need, and people with more jobs.

It is the foundation of the most powerful economy in the world. Instead of trying to get someone to pay you more than your position is worth, you make yourself worth paying more by increasing your value.

My wife's grandfather had his back broken by union thugs because he was teaching his fellows how to read and write English, which was screwing up the union votes.

My grandfather was beaten up by union thugs because he would not hire any laborers, let alone union, to help him build, paint, run electrical wiring, etc., in his general store and tailor shop. (this would be a building with a single room apartment that my father lived in and worked out of until he was 15, where he and my grandparents were the only employees)

And in the same era, corporations hired thugs to beat striking union members. Whatever your opinions of unions try not to judge them based on what happened to your grandfather in an era were there was a much larger rate of violence on both sides.

Exactly. American unions have been unable to effectively strike because almost all common forms of strike activity and solidarity are illegal. It is illegal to refuse to manufacture with scab materials. It is illegal to strike without authorization from national union leadership who have been bought off by the company in question. It is illegal to organize a general strike. Unions in America can't even enforce actual picket lines -- they can merely stand around outside asking nicely for scabs to respect the

In Europe, these union acts aren't illegal at all. After all, how do you expect the right to strike to matter if the company can just hire replacement workers? Unions simply don't have enough power in the USA.

Poor Verizon. Profits have only doubled to $4.6 billion (http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/25/verizon-profits-nearly-double-but-miss-wall-street-expectations/) and yet it's trying to cut benefits to its workers.

Another corporate-sponsored propaganda piece brought to you by "anonymous"

If it is like anything else, the problem is not employees who are working. After all, it is easy enough to know if you can cover their pay and healthcare. It is retired workers that are the issue. Companies and Governments for the last 50 or 60 years have agreed to terms that both they and those in charge at the Unions knew would lead to a situation where for every working employee, there are 3 former employees being paid a retirement for 20, 30 or 40 years and benefits. That is not sustainable.

Really? The fight was over $1000/yr per employee? $252 million is a big number, it's fun to claim people are greedy, but that's not nearly as big a number when you divide it over the number of years, and the number of employees who were striking.

It is when you consider that Verizon has been making a lot more profit.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/25/verizon-profits-nearly-double-but-miss-wall-street-expectations/ [engadget.com]
they made four+ billions of dollars in PROFIT in a single quarter. They want to reduce employee benefits/wages at the same time.
These workers should strike - at this point the company has shown they don't give a shit about them, and that the only way they're going to keep the same benefits they have now is to show Verizon that it can

It's about a company whose profits are up but it still tries to cut benefits to employees while it lavishly rewards the execs. They quite rightly want to stop that trend since the corporate psychopaths certainly won't stop it on their own any time before we slip into third world status.

If the executives were not satisfied with their compensation, they could have left.

That's what workers could do as well,(snip)

How does that change anything? They'll just hire new people who do like to be fucked in the ass financially.

That's what happens when you work a job that anyone can do. If you quit, they will hire anyone to do it, probably for less pay. I guess they should be thankful that the company keeps them around when they could easily fire them or lay them off and hire someone else to do the job for less pay.

See, the trick is to find a job that no one else can do or that no one else wants to do. The first one requires skill and a lot of hard work to get to that position. The second just requires that you are willing to do crap work. Management fits into the first category. People that clean up crime scenes, for example fit into the second. Both get paid well. Everyone else is expendable and doesn't get paid much.

I can't support unions when they use the same kind of illegal tactics as employers. I believe in the power of the strike to compel owners to behave responsibly. I do not believe in illegal or simply irresponsible actions to try and achieve that result.

Don't fall into the trap. Such instances were incredibly rare, and Verizon behaved much worse, repeatedly calling the cops to disperse union workers who were simply using their constitutional right to assembly. Remember who controls the media, and remember how it's reported. Then compare it to citizen journalism (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy-Q5ct0AtY&feature=player_embedded) showing the exact opposite of what the summary says.

That summary would be a joke if it was even remotely funny. Talk about missing the plot. Everyone should be proud of the CWA and the IBEW workers who organized one of the most important and successful strikes in recent memory. Let's get the facts straight: On the eve of the strike, Verizon announced it would pay a special $10 billion dividend to shareholders. At the same time, its negotiators were pushing for $1 billion in concessions from workers. The company has made $3 billion already this year, and nearly $20 billion in the last four years.

So Verizon, which has been insanely profitable in recent years, decided to reward it's hardworking employees by attempting to slash their health care benefits, freeze their pensions, denie new hires pensions and health care benefits and by attempting to prevent new hires from organizing in unions. All the while Verizon has been outsourcing more and more positions to firms overseas. Scabs struck 15 picketers during the two week strike. And FOX news, the likely source of this so called "summary", has been demonizing the hard working union members 24/7. While Verizon shareholders are swimming in the dough and Verizon execs laugh all the way to the bank.

I personally will never give Verizon one red cent until they start to do right by their employees. Greedy friggin corporate bastards, the lot of 'em.

There will be fewer and fewer jobs in USA exactly because of actions like the one described above. Why risk losing your investment to the government created inflation if you are going to be demonized as an investor for wanting a return on your investment?

This will give a good example to the rest of the industries that still allow unions in their shops.

Verizon announced it would pay a special $10 billion dividend to shareholders.

- yes, the shareholders. Those bastards, who were funding the operations. How dare they to want to escape government created inflation and move their money out of the USD denominated assets into something valuable?

I wonder how many pension funds are holding Verizon shares nowadays?

The company has made $3 billion already this year, and nearly $20 billion in the last four years.

- isn't that what business is for? Investing into it to make money? Who are you to decide what is a good return and what is not, especially given the government created inflation?

by attempting to slash their health care benefits,

The workers are striking because, they say, Verizon is preparing to make wide-spread wage cuts and to increase the amount employees contribute to their health care plans and pensions, among other things....Additionally, Verizon does not plan to cut or remove its current employeesâ(TM) pensions. Instead, it hopes to move future employees away from pensions and into enhanced 401(k) plans, with increased contributions from Verizon....A major source of contention between the two groups is health care. Union workers currently do not pay for their own health care. The company is now asking for the union workers to do so because of the continued increase in health care costs.

The non-union workers in Verizon are paying part of their health care premiums, the union workers do not. I am amazed that Verizon didn't try to tackle that issue much earlier!

As to pensions - companies should not even be in a position where they are forced to think about workers' retirements. SS needs to go away but so must this idea that company where you work is supposed to think for you about your own pension plan!

As per your post verizon was trying to reduce the benefits (salaries+pension+health care) of their employees. I realise you are a libertarian, and therefore are arithmetically impaired, but it works like that: you hire someone at some given level of benefits. If you want to change that, you negotiate. If they don't agree, tough luck, you signed the contract.

But maybe you think contracts only apply when they benefit corporations? Or maybe you think that people can assemble to form corporations, but not union

Union movement was already in full force for a while by the time Ford started his business. One nice thing about unions (and labor movement in general) is that they don't have to be everywhere to affect business policies. The mere knowledge that employees can unionize already makes a pressure on businessmen to provide a better working environment.

One other thing that had a similar effect was a series of socialist/communist revolutions in Europe, and particularly the success of the one in Russia. For all its flaws, it did scare big business shitless because they realized that they can lose everything, including their lives, practically overnight if they press too hard. Some decided to launch a preemptive strike, and that is how fascism appeared, and why it had such a strong backing among the rich elites. Others have realized that stable society is one where people are certain in their future, and wealth disparity is not so big and prominent - and that is where the modern social democracy and welfare state come from.

No amount of regulations can stop a profitable thing from happening, you see.

Sure it can. That's why government retains the monopoly on the use of force. Those with the guns set the rules. In a properly functioning democratic society, people - through their fairly elected representative - have the guns.

people always employed children in human history, the entire notion that child labor should be abolished only became possible with all the automation and increase of efficiencies in production, which required more educated work force.

The problem wasn't child labor, it was unregulated child labor - as in, 14 hours work day and other pleasantries. If you think that's what "efficient free market" is, I suggest you try it with your kids.

And of course it wasn't automation which abolished child labor. The "nice" thing about human labor is just how insanely cheap it can get in a monopolized buyer's market for it. And when it's cheap enough, it beats machines in many areas. This is still true today, which is evident if you visit any impoverished third-world country. Automation only becomes cheaper when something else is there to prevent squeezing down labor costs.

what are you talking about? Oligarchy and monopolists are direct product of government regulations and intervention.

Yes, big businesses and their supporters all say that. But those of us who know our history know it's blatant falsehood. Monopolies do benefit from government regulation in countries where they can subvert said regulation to serve their goals (aka "government capitalism" - USA, China etc), but they thrive just as well in free market. Economy of scale leads to an inevitable conclusion - the most "efficient" market is the one with a single actor. That is the inevitable end state of any unregulated free market in an industrial society. 19th century has given ample empirical proof for this.

Where the hell do you see "laissez faire" model in USA? Where is it? Telecoms? They are government propped up monopolies. Military? Education? Insurance? Banks? Agriculture? Energy? Utilities? WHAT? Where do you see anything that is NOT a monopoly or oligopoly in USA?

USA itself is not laissez faire today, it's government capitalism (defined as government regulating market in favor of capitalists, rather than to protect the interests of society). However, USA foreign policy does promote laissez faire in other countries, because it is then easier to dominate them economically. Prominent examples of the outcome of such intervention were early economic reforms in collapsing USSR. Another one is Argentina. Baltic states are a more recent victim of the same.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are these Baltic countries, and they have been under constan

What really pisses me off about union workers is how selfish they are, when they claim to be otherwise - it's become a cartel. Did the (incredibly foul-mouthed) union worker think of the families of the other two drivers? Of course not - all that matters is their own well being and screw the rest of the company / people. I recall working for a top university not too long ago and I was supposed to get a new desk placed for me from an office next door. I offered to do it myself when my boss told me not to tou

I'm not in a union, there's no union for my profession. Sure, I don't get a pension, but my income went up 50% in 12 months. I'm not management, I'm just white collar.Unions create a system where smaller businesses can't get enough skilled workers because they can't afford the level of benefits given by giant corporations. Unions take their dues and use them to line politicians' pockets to keep the system that way.

Meanwhile, businesses in Japan and China don't face the same costs and are able to out-compet

The effect is that the employees had to work for no pay -- the fine they received was based on their individual salaries (if I remember correctly, their base salaries, so e.g. employees could work overtime to pay the fine faster). It is a pointless semantic argument, except to make the no-pay work legal by avoiding issues of anti-slavery laws.

My point is not that the law is good or bad, it is that the employees were indeed punished for striking. As for taking their case to the politicians, I would say

Once upon a time, people looked at union worker's higher pay rates and benefits and said, "I want the same for my family." Thus, the modern middle class was born, and the gap between rich and poor was narrowed to the smallest in American hisotry.

Today, people say, "why should those union guys have it so good? I want them to suffer just like me!" And now the middle class has turned against itself, and the gap widens to historic levels. I hope it'll turn back around some day, but our corporate masters have gotten really good at turning us against ourselves, and at labor unions that exist to help us.

Strange: my family made it pretty well without the need of unions to force and coerce people to do their own bidding (by, you know, actually working competitively). Furthermore, I could agree with you that, in the start, unions did serve a positive purpose. Yet the conditions and situation back then were far worse than they are now, and their demands typically involved improvements in safety - fair enough. Yet over the years, unions have become cartels to force companies to do their own bidding at the cost

Actually that's a popular myth. It's a lot more complicated, but the biggest factor was the usual one - in a mature economy the only thing that increases the standard of living is technological advance. One of those advances was that the size of businesses such as the railroads required the creation of publicly-held corporations (a fundamentally democratic institution) and the need for a professional management structure. One can even see the institution of labor laws (which were indeed largely the result of labor lobbying and a popular sense of rightness) as one of those advances.

It's arguable that the unionizing of the late 19th and early 20th century accelerated the process of diffusion outwards from the centers of wealth, but it's not certain. The big labor strikes of the early 1900s can be seen just as easily as the last gasp of the old methods, rather than the first wave of the new.

Technological advance => standard of living is Economics 101. You're confusing the mean with questions of distribution. Prior to these technological advances, there was much less wealth to go around, and those who owned outright the biggest companies of the day were orders of magnitudes wealthier than their employees - much more than today. Technology has no inherent force toward or away from capital - for example, much of recent IT tech advances has given individuals much more power over information (vis. the 'Arab Spring'). During the period from the early steel industry through the 1950s much of tech advance had to do with industrial scale, which did have that effect. But that's not always, or even commonly, the way it works. The typewriter is considered by some to have been the single single factor in the emancipation of women and bringing them into the work force (but the need for processing paperwork due to large scale corporatism was also a factor.)

CEOs are not really related to the rise of the 'professional management' class - they existed before under different names, but until publicly-held corporations they were either the owner, or answered only to a small group of owners. IOW, that class existed before, and were previously much more isolated from the mundane than they are now (if one can imagine that). But flacid corporate boards (generally composed of the same group) have certainly allowed too much distortion in the last few decades.

I'm not sure of your point re Marxism, but I was a freshman in high school when I did a comparative analysis of communism and capitalism, and came to the conclusion that Marxism can not succeed, as it fails to provide a stable feedback loop - "To each according to his needs, and from each according to his abilities" is constructing two isolated unstable systems that are doomed to fail. In practice, as we have seen in the last century, the feedback loop ends up running through the political structure, engendering a corrupt bureaucracy. In fact one can argue that is the problem with the internal structure of corporations - internally they operate as Marxist centrally-planned bureaucracies that encourage cronyism, corruption and competition based on political machinations rather than competence and performance.

Today, people say, "why should those union guys have it so good? I want them to suffer just like me!" And now the middle class has turned against itself, and the gap widens to historic levels. I hope it'll turn back around some day, but our corporate masters have gotten really good at turning us against ourselves, and at labor unions that exist to help us.

See, back in the Utopian day you speak of, union members were proud of their work and it was well known. You could expect on American cars to be the best, most reliable cars on the planet. An union constructed building would be one that you knew was not only up to code, but surpassed it. Union members were their own foreman and made sure that all union members were doing their jobs RIGHT.

That's not the case any more. Now you have union members standing around waiting for the union electrician to plug something into a wall socket. You have union members enter a "job bank" requesting a job that is not available in their area and sit around and nothing for years waiting for a job that no longer exists. Now you have union members who are completely incompetent, lazy and cocky because they know they can not get fired. Now you have people literally attacking, even shooting [dailycaller.com] and vandalizing non-union shops and their own coworkers who don't join them. To make sure the operations continue, they want to make all union votes completely open, meaning union thugs may see how you voted to make sure you voted right.

Meanwhile, you have workers that still take pride in their job who work hard and put in the extra hours to get ahead only to see their promotion go to some union member that does nothing but has been at the company doing nothing longer than you have and union rules will mandate they get promoted before someone newer. You have small businesses trying to compete getting put out of business because they are getting harassed by union members of their trade or lose out to jobs because a union may provide kickbacks to your former customers to make union work cheaper "Walmart style". You bust your ass to have a job, pay for your own benefits and struggle to pay your taxes only to see those that are paid with your tax dollars go on strike and literally shut down your government because they DON'T want to pay for their benefits. They want you to pay for your health insurance AND theirs. There are even unions that force non-union members to pay union dues.

And you don't understand why people don't like unions any more? I too hope it will turn back someday to a day when a union not only takes care of their workers, but also guarantees that a union product is a BETTER product. When times get tough, a union is willing to make concessions, even if only temporary, to help the company make it through a tough time and ensure that everyone still has a job. I want to see a union throw a member out for showing up late or doing shoddy work. Until that happens, unions will continue to get the reputation they deserve.

See, back in the Utopian day you speak of, union members were proud of their work and it was well known. You could expect on American cars to be the best, most reliable cars on the planet. An union constructed building would be one that you knew was not only up to code, but surpassed it. Union members were their own foreman and made sure that all union members were doing their jobs RIGHT.

That's not the case any more. Now you have union members standing around waiting for the union electrician to plug something into a wall socket. You have union members enter a "job bank" requesting a job that is not available in their area and sit around and nothing for years waiting for a job that no longer exists. Now you have union members who are completely incompetent, lazy and cocky because they know they can not get fired. Now you have people literally attacking, even shooting and vandalizing non-union shops and their own coworkers who don't join them. To make sure the operations continue, they want to make all union votes completely open, meaning union thugs may see how you voted to make sure you voted right...,. etc.

A nice bit of unsubstantiated spin and propaganda, copied and pasted from the talking points. Regardless, just substitute "management" for "union *" in the paragraphs above and you can see there's nothing unusual about unions.

What unions do is give workers the same power to protect their interests that management has, both at the workplace and in government. There is no doubt that human beings use power for both good and bad purposes, just like both unions and management do: Some are legitimate, like obtain

Less than 7% of private workers in the US are unionized, yet you see it as a "cartel". Verizon has a monopoly on land lines in the North East and mid-Atlantic (with AT&T and Qwest covering 99% of the rest of the country), yet you don't see that as a cartel. Verizon, Sprint and AT&Tmobile are three companies who also control over 99% of US wireless, yet you don't see them as a cartel. The wealthiest 1% of the country, most of whom inherited all of their wealth, owns the majority of bonds, over 40% of stocks and so forth - but they're not a cartel.

The average, working, wealth-producing person is not cartelized at all in the US. The rich parasite heirs who you worship are who rules the US. One of the reasons the US economy has had sluggish growth for decades, while the second largest economy in the world, China's, has been growing at 10% a year for 30 years. Not much will change in that respect in the US - the mass of boot-lickers like you, along with the fundamentalist crazies, will succeed in holding the US down as the rest of the world passes it by...

Perhaps you're right. Yet that's absolutely NO excuse to use your little girl as a roadblock and make threats and intimidation to coerce others to stop doing their jobs just because you don't like the situation you're in.

On the contrary, I'm one of the most capitalist people you'll ever meet. Capitalism is about improving the product and increasing benefits for everyone involved through voluntary trade (voluntary being the key word here). What's going on here is NOT a form of competitive, voluntary market, but rather one group of people forcing others to stop their work for their own personal reasons. This is not capitalism; not by a long shot.

I don't normally find such slant in Slashdot summaries (except when it's pro-open-source, obviously, which is part of the reason I come here). Using the word "illegal" and "criminal" repeatedly to describe one side of a labor dispute is just beyond the journalistic pale. I know this is "citizen journalism", but it doesn't have to read like some anti-union blog.

This is the worst the Verizon strike-busters could come up with? It perplexes me how many news stories I've read about how "one union picketer even went as far as to instruct his young daughter to stand in front of a Verizon truck to illegally block it". If you watch the video, HE stands in front of the moving truck, which stops. Then she walks over of her own accord. Then the instruction part comes in, he tells her to stand in front of the stopped truck alongside the cameraman who is obviously standing there as well in front of the stopped truck. She holds up her sign, the cameraman films. Then he goes over and yells at the scab who took his job for less than a minute. As happens every time, they then let the trucks go through.

Illegal is a great word. It is illegal to murder and rape. It is also illegal for me to loan one of my DVDs to a friend so that he can copy it to his computer. It is illegal to smoke marijuana. In virtually all industrialized countries but this one, what is illegal is for scabs to replace striking workers. In the good old, God-fearing, Libya-bombing, Iraq-bombing, Afghanistan-bombing USA though, it is illegal for workers to delay scabs from taking their jobs.

Verizon is one of the largest examples of a company which does nothing but profit from its monopolies. It spends tons of money on state and federal lobbying, and has a lock on a portion of wireless wavelength, and an almost total and complete lock on the local loop. The majority of its stock is held by the very wealthiest of Americans (over 40% is held by the wealthiest 1%, and the 51% mark is only slightly larger), and the majority of those people inherited virtually all of their wealth. The majority of the majority owners are heirs who sit on their asses and expropriate dividend checks from not their government-lobbied, government-granted near-monopolies, but the people in this video, the people out there doing all the work and creating all the wealth for the company.

I know the USA is a piece of garbage, ruled by these rich parasite heirs, aside from their religious wacko pals and other assorted asocial Tea Party nuts, so there's not much use getting over-exerted about any of this. The words criminal and illegal really mean nothing here. Before World War I, for workers to form a union in the USA was itself a criminal act. It was illegal. As I said, in other countries, these scabs replacing striking workers is illegal. In the good old USA workers replacing the scabs taking their jobs is illegal. Just like breaking DRM and all the other nonsense. We are all slaves to these rich parasite heirs trying to extract money from their monopolies and the wage slaves they have working for them. It's naturally American to be filled with vitriol and hatred for the average working class Joe standing with his union brothers to try and earn a living wage. Following authority, passively licking the boots of the lazy rich heirs who own the majority of Verizon stock, with Almighty God watching over all is the natural order of things. The reward will be in the "next life".

(and WRT to who references to who owns stocks, is an heir and such, you can consult sources like the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, Forbes 400 richest list and other sources).

The discussion on these kind of topics is so vitrolic, so filled with hatred from all sides that you got to wonder how long it will be before the US just tears itself apart. Personally for me the flag waving alone is enough, nobody has to shout out that hard they are a nation standing together unless they known that it is all a lie. No American cares anything about another American unless that other person might be getting a penny that the first doesn't.

So, some people have health care benefits and you don't. Is that a reason to hate all unions? Maybe you should fix your own issue yourselve and not demand everyone else has the same shitty contract you do.

When even South Africa is now moving to national health care, perhaps it is time for Americans to realize the most expensive system in the world that scores as one of the worsed just isn't working.

But hey, continue to fight each other to death over things that other countries solved over half a century ago. Meanwhile US production is going down and down and you country is falling apart around you. Fixed those bridges yet?

2012 going to be interesting. The republicans did it this time, every single one of them is utterly batshit insane. The democrats? They can hardly get rid of Obama but the racist, oops right wingers hate his gut just for being black. Even if he gets re-elected the senate cripples him, the old US idea of both houses keeping each other in check has become a strangle hold on the nation with the tea party putting in the final squeeze. Everyone with a brain knows their ideas will bankrupt the US but they can't be ignored as the lunatic fringe they are.

The US won't fall because someone else was smarter, it will fall because it kills itself from within. It is funny to see from the outside, you got extreme right wingers trying to determine who is the least or most extreme right winger. Mean while the roads are falling apart, education is going to hell and production has ground to a halt with everyone buying Chinese.

There are no qualifications needed to become a parent. Anybody can join. Whether you think this is a good thing depends on your perspective. Governments that change this policy tend to go downhill on human rights very quickly.

"Um... by definition [corporations] are unthinking by their very nature... people who are either unwilling or unable to represent themselves (ie [shareholders]) band together and let others ([CEOs]) think and negotiate for them.

I have never been a [corporate stock holder], nor will I ever... because I am competent enough to represent myself.

Not that I have a particular opinion on the Verizon strike specifically, but why is collective action of capital holders the pinnacle of the modern economic system, but the collective action of laborers is destroying society as we know it?

It is interesting that you simultaneously think that it is fine that people form corporations so they have a limited liability in their investments, but not unions, to have bargaining power much larger than you could ever have, however competent you may be.

Nonetheless, they are the best and only defense that the average low and middle class person has against discrimination, abuse, exploitation and harassment in the workplace,

Yes, we should all give up one source of harassment, abuse, exploitation, and discrimination for another. All unions these days care about are themselves. Not the customers, not the company, not the other employees, hell, not even the union members much anymore. All they care about is making sure that they continue to exist. Unions have large income streams through forced participation(have to pay dues even if you dont want to be a member/be represented)and lots of political influence. Union leadership